Distance of Time and Place do really cure what they seem to aggravate; and taking Leave of our Friends resembles taking Leave of the World, concerning which it hath been often said, that it is not Death but Dying which is terrible.

Scarcely one person in a thousand is capable of tasting the happiness of others.

The good or evil we confer on others very often, I believe, recoils on ourselves; for as men of a benign disposition enjoy their own acts of beneficence equally with those to whom they are done, so there are scarce any natures so entirely diabolical as to be capable of doing injuries without paying themselves some pangs for the ruin which they bring on their fellow-creatures.

As it often happens that the best men are but little known, and consequently cannot extend the usefulness of their examples a great way, the biographer is of great utility, as, by communicating such valuable patterns to the world, he may perhaps do a more extensive service to mankind than the person whose life originally afforded the pattern.

Handsome is that handsome does.

There are two considerations which always imbitter the heart of an avaricious man--the one is a perpetual thirst after more riches, the other the prospect of leaving what he has already acquired.

No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.